January 6, 2021 • 52 mins
This week on First Coat we have Jordana Vasquez. Jordana and I met at a Placemaking conference a few years ago and we've stayed in touch ever since. Jordana studied architecture and has worked in design, art, community development, and sustainability. She recently co-founded the Women of Color Collective in Sustainability (WOC/CS), which facilitates strategic exchanges between Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) sustainability pioneers, climate justice organizers, and advocacy groups to fight inequity and address climate change.
On this episode we talk about how she and her co-founder started WOC/CS, her experience leading a grassroots public art project, her project Urbanonsite, and what it's like to be the only woman of color in the room. We brainstorm business development, for both Distill Creative and WOC/CS and how we're creating our directories. Jordana also shares how to use a personal project to connect with change-makers and artists around the world, thoughts on the role of public art, how to collaborate with sustainability organizations, and tips for career development.
Show Notes: http://distillcreative.com/blog/1/5/jordana-vasquez-on-starting-woc/cs-grassroots-public-art-and-being-curious-ep-13
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stephanie Eche (00:02):
Welcome to First Coat. Where we explore public
realm art, how it's made and whyit matters. I'm your host,
Stephanie Eche, an artist andentrepreneur based in Brooklyn,
New York. I run DistillCreative, where I curate and
produce site-specific artprojects for real estate
developers. I focus on creatingmore equitable and inclusive
projects and I want to get moreexposure for the artists and
(00:23):
developers doing this work.
Happy New Year, everyone. Thankyou so much for listening to the
First Coat podcast. I am sohappy you are here. I have a
very special bonus episode foryou this week to finish off
season one. As you may know, Istarted working on this podcast
in March of 2020, when I wasstuck at home and well, I'm
still social distancing andstaying at home, but I have
released 12 episodes of theFirst Coat podcast and this will
(00:46):
be number 13. If you haven'tlistened to episodes one through
12, please go check them out. Iinterviewed some amazing mural
artists and we discusseverything from how to use
parachute cloth to how to make acreative brief for client. I'll
be releasing Season Two of theFirst Coat podcast in about a
month. For the next season, I'llbe doing some shorter episodes
that explore the nuts and boltsof public art, as well as some
(01:07):
book reviews and how I startedthis podcast. I want to know
what you want to know about artand public space, so please
email me your questions atStephanie@distillcreative.com.
That's S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E @D-I-S-T-I-L-L creative.com.
Also, if you would like tosupport this podcast, find me on
Patreon atpatreon.com/firstcoat. For as
(01:29):
little as $1 a month, you canhelp keep this podcast going.
Okay, now for our final episodeof Season One. This week on
First Coat we have JordanaVasquez. Jordana and I met at a
placemaking conference a fewyears ago and we've stayed in
touch ever since. Jordanastudied architecture and has
worked in design, art, communitydevelopment, and sustainability.
She recently co-founded Women ofColor Collective in
(01:52):
Sustainability, WOC/CS, whichfacilitates strategic exchanges
between Black, Indigenous,People of Color sustainability
pioneers, climate justiceorganizers, and advocacy groups
to fight inequity and addressclimate change. On this episode,
we talk about how she and herco-founder started WOC/CS, her
experience leading a grassrootspublic art project, her project
Urbanonsite, and what it's liketo be the only woman of color in
(02:14):
the room, which I also couldrelate to, having the same
experiences. We brainstormbusiness development for both
Distill Creative and WOC/CS andhow we're creating our own
directories. Jordana also shareshow to use a personal project to
connect with changemakers andartists around the world,
thoughts on the role of publicart, how to collaborate with
sustainability organizations,and tips for career development.
(02:35):
Please note, this interview wasrecorded in July of 2020. Here's
our conversation.
Thank you so much for being onFirst Coat. I'm really excited
to chat with you today. Can youtell us a little bit about who
you are and what you do?
Jordana Vasquez (02:48):
Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.
So what I do, ooh, that's thatheavy loaded question because
I've been able to wear a lot ofdifferent hats throughout my
professional journey. So maybeinstead of saying the title
right away and saying myprofessional current position, I
can tell you a little bit aboutthe words that describe me and
then well take it from there. Iam a curious person, I always
(03:11):
try to find connections betweenpeople and places and spaces,
and you know this, we connectedover placemaking. So I try to
always find a way of connectingmy background in architecture
with the work that I currentlydo with sustainability and just
asking questions, and I thinkthat's what's been one constant
in my professional journey. Thesecond thing I would mention, I
(03:33):
am a social connector. I am notan extroverted person, by any
means, I am sociable, but I doenjoy building relationships and
building genuine relationships.
And I'll talk a little bit abouthow that got into play with
WOC/CS. Third thing that I canthink of would be changemaker
slash social impact agent. And Iwould say this one can bit get a
(03:54):
little bit technical, I amtrained as an architect, I went
to architecture school at PrattInstitute, I graduated a couple
years ago. Not to give away any,any age but it was 2014. And
since then, I've worked indifferent capacities, worked in
architecture firms, interiordesign, design build. Found my
way navigating the construction,architecture side of things and
(04:18):
social impact with economicdevelopment and work with
Hurricane Sandy. I think at thetime you and I met, I was
probably working at one of theseorganizations. So from that
work, I eventually had anopportunity to go more into
sustainability, energy efficientspecifically, using the skills
from an architecture andconstruction and but also the
(04:41):
technical part of it andimplement it to new
construction. So highperformance buildings, working
with programs like LEED andNYSERDA, and Enterprise green
communities, actually having aseat with the designers and the
architects that were working onthese projects and making sure
that their buildings were themost high efficient and
(05:02):
sustainable building that it canbuild. That's in a nutshell, a
little bit of everything that Iwould say would be on my resum.
There is a bunch of other thingsthat are not there, but
hopefully a little splash ofcreativity and all of those,
that would be a constant.
Stephanie Eche (05:18):
Can you tell us about your heart of the maker
project?
Jordana Vasquez (05:20):
So that was a project for my venture
Urbanonsite. So Hands Of TheMaker was a, well a little bit
of context. This was part ofSTooPS, so STooPS in Brooklyn,
it's a yearly gathering ofartists, the initiatives led by
an artist by the name, KendraRoss. She's a phenomenal artist
and she's a dancer amongst manyother things in the visual arts
(05:43):
world, and she had this ideathat she wanted to bring public
art to BedStuy and she wanted tohave the artists be from BedStuy
or have lived in BedStuy had aconnection to the community, and
it was an array of, you know,dancers, there's a little bit of
like, performance, spoken words,and visual arts. So I was living
(06:04):
in BedStuy at the time, we justrecently moved, I can't remember
exactly a year, I submitted apitch for doing a mural with
mosaics called the Hands Of TheMaker. It was part of my work
with Urbanonsite, which is aplatform for work with content
and photography for sustainablebusiness. So that was the
original, my creative outlet,like my excuse to meet artists
(06:25):
and my excuse to learn aboutthem. For this particular
project, I wanted to map outBrooklyn. So I was running
around the whole city findingmaps where I could find them,
like the subway, old magazines,you name it, found recycled
materials from differentcompanies were selling tiles. So
you imagine me in the city nextto Home Depot with a bunch of
(06:46):
tile pieces that[INDISTINGUISHABLE]. I put them
all together, I mapped it outthe exercise that I wanted my
part of the community to do wascome in, see it as a puzzle, and
try to put the puzzle togetherof the map of Brooklyn. And the
interesting part of that was tosee what kind of conversations
were going to take place. Werepeople just going to be fixated
(07:07):
in the idea of making the map,or were they going to be talking
about like, oh, I lived in thisneighborhood or my family's from
here, which was eventually whathappened. People were talking
about like, yeah, I grew up inEast Flatbush, and this, I know
for sure that this part goeshere. It was fun. I mean, I had
a great time. Ive not doneanything like that ever since,
but the program, the initiativestill happens, every year, if
(07:30):
you look up STooPS Brooklyn,there gonna be a lot of
interesting public arthappening.
Stephanie Eche (07:36):
That's awesome.
I remember you talking aboutthat project. It's like a
casual, but also complicatedapproach, right, to public art.
Because anytime you engage withthe public, it becomes more
complicated, but if you didn'tdo that, then it wouldn't really
be as I think maybe impactful.
I think it was interesting tosee how the public was going to
react because I think we all hadan idea of like, this is
(07:57):
probably what's going to happen.
But if you just let the art beor the pieces be and see how
people, you know, start eitherconfiguring the pieces or
interpreting their understandingof what they were looking at. It
was completely different fromthe idea that you had at the
beginning. I noticed that withthe dances or the spoken words
and people's reactions werereally, really diverse, I would
say.
Where are you living now? Didyou, did you move since then?
(08:18):
So, this is 2017. I moved acrossBrooklyn, so I lived in Ditmas
Park and from Ditmus I moved toPark Slope, and from Park Slope
I moved to Hoboken, so Im inNew Jersey now. Im in Hoboken.
Oh wow. That's why I don't seeyou that often. I'm just
I know. It's been, it's beeninteresting because I was the
kidding.
first person who said I'll nevermoved back to New Jersey and
(08:40):
here I am, trying to convincefriends to come out for lunch or
dinner. It's a beautiful place.
I love it. So I, it's hard forme to go back to Brooklyn and
come back at night the wholestory, but I would do it.
How has your relationshipchanged with pre-COVID commuting
into the city and then now thatyou don't have to?
Its weird. I mean, just like inBrooklyn, I had everything that
(09:01):
I needed within a mile. I hadthe stores and entertainment and
the park, where for COVID weknow you, we've been in a bubble
ever since March, I had to leavethe house because I had to take
care of family members thatwere, you know, hospitalized. So
I had to go back to the city allthe time. But my partner who was
working in the city, he had tostay here for four months. For
(09:22):
me, I did everything fromgetting to, from being the only
single person inside the bus at7am to go to city and trying not
to breathe and move to takingcabs to walking and taking the
subway, it was, you know it'sscary. The whole commuting, that
whole navigating the city. Thecity, if you go, I don't know
how it is now because I haven'tbeen in for last few weeks, at
(09:44):
the beginning of April it waslike ghost town, everyone Wall
Street, because I was there,nobody was there. You only saw
like the black and brown folksworking but it was, where are
all the Wall Street people therein there.
Yeah, I just happened to be atBryant Park today, actually and
it was really weird, becausethere were still people, but it
wasn't, it wasn't how itnormally is, you know, but it's
(10:07):
just super bizarre. That was thesecond time I've been in
Manhattan since March and itmakes me sad, but it's also, I
don't know, it's just, it'sdepressing thinking about all
the lives that have been lostand the things that could have
been avoided. But on the otherhand, forcing people to utilize
public spaces for their dailyneeds, it's kind of interesting.
Like, you can't go insideanywhere.
Jordana Vasquez (10:26):
Right.
Stephanie Eche (10:27):
You have to, like have a meeting in the park
or whatever.
Jordana Vasquez (10:30):
I saw that happen with the initiatives from
the parklets in Midtown. How,yeah, how like, had that became
an idea. You know, let'sexperiment with this open space
here and see what happens andnow they're using that template
or that model across the wholecity for restaurants. That's
such an interesting thing. Younever thought that that was
going to be the normal thatwe're living now.
Stephanie Eche (10:51):
Totally. I think, though, it's like, and
I'm curious about yourperspective on this, but it's
like everything that I loveabout public space is now like,
my worst nightmare, because it'sin a pandemic, right? So it's
like, great, all the restaurantscan be out on the street, or in
these really cute parklets, butshould we really be serving
people right now? And then, youknow, this like encouraging
(11:11):
gathering, even though weshouldn't be? It's just very
confusing.
I think, you know, it'sfortunate, unfortunate that
like, the situation that we'rein here now, because I've been
in places where I've had theoption to dine in, and I
immediately, you know, I thinkit twice, I think about how
close am I going to be to thetable next to me or like, how's
(11:31):
the air going to transferbetween us, and I felt, through
experience, a little bit more atease with the restaurants that
had an open space, either in theback or the front. So I'm a
little bit grateful that we'regetting creative with like, how
are we, you know, sociallydistancing in recreational
activities and things like that.
I find it very interesting howfolks are doing in parks and how
I keep seeing photos of like,either doing circles in the
(11:54):
ground, to state that this isthe physical distance that we
need from each other, or likehow nature itself has served
kind of a barrier between spacesand people just getting, you
know, excited and creative aboutdoing this. So I think we just
have to, we have to give peopleoptions. Ideally, we would all
be, you know, I would thinkbetter protected and more
(12:15):
conscious of each other. Butfrom what I've seen, like that,
our 25 year old neighbors don'twant to be held home, it is
pretty sad that I feel like as a30 year old something, I'm here
protected and everything, and Iwant to do the right thing. But
I also understand that tellingthem not to go out and telling
them not to do this doesn't getme anywhere. So the best thing I
can do is hope for a designer tocome up with the spaces that
(12:40):
restricts them from going, youknow, too close to each other
and hope for the best that theyrespect those barriers.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about Urbanonsite?
Yeah. Urbanonsite came about, Iwould say 2015, Summer 2015, was
right when I started Liske, andit was during the period where I
was transitioning fromarchitecture and I wanted to do
(13:02):
something more impactful. Iquickly learned working at lisk,
that as architects we had twodifferent options, we can do
business as usual, you know,high rise buildings, thinking
about aesthetics and make it afunction and that said, or we
had another option, which washow are we going to be designing
the cities that are going to besustainable, more self reliant,
(13:25):
more efficient. So I waslearning so much about
sustainability and whatsustainability meant, from a
resiliency perspective,especially. Thinking about
floods and thinking abouthurricanes, because that was the
scope of the work back then, andI just needed a place where I
could not only brainstorm, butalso learn and, and share that
(13:45):
knowledge. But I'm also anarchitect, so I had to make it
creative and make it fun. So Isaid, I'm going to create a
platform that I will use notonly as a creative outlet, but
also to learn about projects andconnect with people. And it has
been, I would say probably themost constant project in my life
because there's always somethingI want to write and share or
(14:07):
there's something of projectphotography that I want to do.
Thanks to, I would say to thatplatform, I've been able to
connect with people in NewOrleans and what I would do is
every time I travel, let's sayCuba or Thailand or New Orleans,
a couple of weeks before I go, Iwould reach out to a local
artist or a local change agentand say hey, I read about your
(14:27):
project, your permaculture inOahu and I'm going to be there
for a couple of days, can I comeover? and people are super open
to explain to you that they havethis permaculture farming in
their backyard and you shouldcome over for dinner and learn
about it, which happened or theywould tell you, hey, if youre
in New Orleans, let me show youthese murals that I did. I might
as well take you barhopping thewhole day and show you the city
(14:50):
through my perspective and thathappened as well. So I would say
Urbanonsite has been my youknow, like I mentioned, my
creative outlet, but also apoint of me to go out there and
seek those questions and seekthose answers that I'm not able
to get through my job becauseI'm intentional about doing this
on another space, anothermedium.
That's what, I think what I likeso much about it, is that it's
(15:12):
not just one subject, it'severything, but it also is
related, you know, everything'srelated and you really do a good
job of tying it back to your ownpersonal experience and opening
the door to what differentpeople are doing in different
places. And I love thatphilosophy of reaching out to
people, researching before youtravel. It's one of the things I
kind of hate about Airbnbexperiences, because they
(15:33):
commodify that in a certain way,but I'm not against that as an
activity, right? Like, we shouldall be connecting with human
beings when we go places, asopposed to just taking the photo
and then moving on.
And I think for, I'm thinking,well, let me see one particular
example, people, not only dothey want to share the story
with you, like if you come up tosomeone and you say, look, I do
(15:53):
this kind of work, like I did,for example, in Miami, during
our basic, you know what I mean.
Jordana Vasquez (15:59):
We were there for the week and looking at the
Yeah.
art pieces, and moving throughthe city and we connected with
the guy who owned an urban farmin the middle of Miami, like
this is, you know, full onalmost permaculture regenerative
farm in the middle of nowhere.
And we said, you know, we wantto come and check it out and
we're gonna take the mostbeautiful photos of your farm
(16:19):
and write a story about it,would you be interested, and
he's like, yes, I would love tosee, you know, the photography
that you come up with and stufflike that and Ill let you know
about, you know, the storybehind this, and it was the
loveliest afternoon, we came in,we learned so much about, when I
say we my printer because myprinter always comes everywhere
I go. We did the photo shoot andit was just such a great
(16:39):
experience and people are superreceptive to that, in my
experience.
Stephanie Eche (16:43):
I'll definitely link to Urbanonsite in the show
notes so everybody can see theseawesome blog posts and your
photography. How did thatdevelop into, or how did you
develop the idea for WOC/CS,Woman Of Color, Collective
Sustainability? And did thoseinspire each other or were they
just completely separate things?
So as part of WOC/CS, well,lets start Urbanonsite, let's
(17:05):
start there. I would also go todifferent events throughout
climate week or eventsthroughout the year, in New York
City, we have the opportunitythat there's events, like every
single day about every singletopic that you can think of. So
sustainability is a big hottopic, back in, it has been the
last five years and continues tobe, but in 2018, 2017, I cant
(17:27):
remember for sure, climate weekwas happening in the fall. And I
went to an event forsustainability in fashion. And I
was there and quickly realizedthat I was the only woman of
color in the room and I knew, itdidn't take long for me to
realize, almost to the pointwhere like, oh, yeah, there's
just no one that looks like me,just one more event in
sustainability and fashion, nobiggie. I look at my left, and I
(17:50):
see this woman on the other sideand you know that face of like
acknowledgement, I was like, oh,I see you, you see me and we
sort of gravitated towards eachother and, across the room and
you know, struck in conversationand realized that she was
working in sustainability andmore like a tech and venture
capital capacity, I believe atthat time, a little bit of
(18:11):
policy, and I was working atthat time in more of a green
technical design and building.
So we decided, you know, toshare contact information and
keep each other updated ofsimilar events. So we did that
for the following year, we wouldemail each other and say, hey,
there's this gathering happeningor there's an interesting
project taking place, you shouldlook into it, you should apply.
(18:31):
And a year into it, we decided,you know, we're having drinks at
Pier 17, I remember this itsJuly 2019, and we're like, you
know, this is great that we'regoing to all these events and
we're accessing all thesedifferent resources, but we
should open the door for otherwomen to also join us and to you
know, point out that there'sgreat talent over there, out
(18:52):
there, but maybe they don't knowof each other and there's not
enough community around some ofthe things that we want to do.
And leadership, you know, welooked up and we talked about a
lack of mentorship, we talkedabout a series of
microaggressions, we talkedabout similar experiences in the
environmental work and talkedabout the lack of women of color
(19:13):
in the leadership status to theboard, executive suite, you name
it. So, we said you know what,we're gonna start a community,
we're gonna start a group, acollective, let it be, and let's
have a meetup, lets have ahappy hour. I think you were
there for that one. Have a happyhour and see what happens, you
know, see if there's anyinteresting positivity for women
who are going to be interestedin this kind of event. And lo
(19:34):
and behold, we had the firstmeetup and we sold out. So we
cannot even go back to that barbecause we reached maximum
capacity. But that was anindicator that there was an
appetite in New York City andeven outside of New York City
for a community where women ofcolor with you know experience
in sustainability couldcollaborate, find resources,
find jobs, mentorship and justreally find other like-minded
(19:57):
individuals. So this was, youknow, the beginning of it. And
it has grown to be somethingmuch more bigger and beautiful
than we anticipated, I can say.
How have you been funding it?
Has this just been all labor oflove so far?
Jordana Vasquez (20:10):
So I would say a mix of those. We had our
initial capital put in, butwe've been able to do a few
events here and there. Like wetypically dont charge much, I
think, a lot of us don't do itfor the well, a lot of us,
theres two of us, we don't doit for like, okay, we need to
make a profit, at least in thebeginning, we didn't want to
make it, you know, that way. So,a lot of our events have been or
(20:32):
are still going to be free ofcharge. We eventually want to
move into the point where we doget to pay people that come and
speak at our events, we want tobe able to pay some of our
volunteers, eventually hire anintern. So we've been applying
to a lot of different grants,we've been, we've been lucky
enough to receive funds for ourlatest event, which was the
(20:54):
grant. So we're going to begranting 10 women with like $300
for you know, whatever basicneeds. So those have been, I
would say a couple differentthings with different approaches
to capital that we've had.
Eventually, we want to move intomore of a tech enabled platform,
where it could be something thatyou can navigate on your phone
or your computer to find allthings WOC/CS, from a map
(21:14):
showing all the green projectsout there led by women of color
to all the job opportunitiespresented to women of color,
waste engage. So that'seventually going to require
funding and I think love can getyou to a certain point, but
eventually, you want to be ableto either fundraise or we've
been working really hard onfunding missions. So hopefully
one of them will pan out. Nexttime you and I talk, it's gonna
(21:36):
be like, yeah, we won that one.
Stephanie Eche (21:38):
That's interesting, because that
similarly, but in a differentvein, but I do think they're
related, basically, how Ienvisioned growing, Distill
Creative, having it be a more ofa tech platform, where like
using overlays of Google Maps,and different things so I could
have basically a directory ofart in public spaces or in the
public realm, but also havebudget, background of the artist
and all of that, and thenhighlight black indigenous
(22:00):
people of color. One question Ihave actually is, so I'm
currently, I may or may not editthis out, but I'm curious on,
your directory and otherdirectories have inspired me to
want to do a directory ofartists.
Jordana Vasquez (22:12):
Yeah.
Stephanie Eche (22:13):
Specifically artists who work in public
spaces, which, as you know,could potentially be any artist,
but definitely are specificartists who are already doing
that type of work, but it issuch a closed environment, it's
hard to get in, I would say,particularly for commissioned
work by developers, which iswhat I'm specializing in right
now. So I, I'm debating what itwould be, like, should it be
(22:34):
bipoc? Should it be woman ofcolor? Should it be women and
bipoc? Or do you have anythoughts on that as far as what
might be more needed? Because Idon't, I don't want it to just,
I want it to be helpful. And ifit's not helpful, then it's not
necessary, right?
I recently came across, throughmy partner, of initiative
venture that they had an ideafor startup that they would
connect artists with public,sorry, artists with commercial
(22:56):
Right and not just because ofthe color of their skin but
buildings. So the artists wouldwork on the piece, commercial
building property managementwould have a way to access to
them, like a directory. I canlink with you later on for a
little more info, because memyself, I don't know all the
details, but for your particularproject, I would think it'd be
more interesting to have it forbipoc, so Black Indigenous
(23:17):
People of Color, just becausethere's such a wealth of
knowledge there and you can goso many different ways, if you
want to really specialize inindigenous art, there's so much
resources out there. If youwanted to specialize in Latinx
or Black, I think having thebipoc allows you an umbrella
(23:38):
that you can explore, dependingon you know, maybe one year you
explore this, so one theme couldlead you to certain kind of
artist and another theme canlead you to a different kind of
artist. So I would, I would gothat way. I think if anything,
what we've seen in the last fewmonths is an appetite for more
art, for more thought leadershipand more, you know, work being
(24:02):
represented by people of colorand Black and Indigenous and
that interest for visibility,the interest for exposure, it's
not new, it's always been there,its just that now we're getting
the recognition that we deserve,and we're not only claiming it,
we're demanding it. So I say gofor it, if this is something you
want to do, I know so manyartists that would be so happy
(24:23):
to finally find a place wheretheir art can be recognized and
easily accessible.
because there is this newinterest in it, which is weird,
at least they're going to getthe commission or the fee or
whatever and instead of- I don'twant there ever to be an excuse
like well, I couldn't find anartist that you know represents
the community or- it's too easy,I think, for people to excuse
(24:45):
away things even though thereare resources that exist.
Not only that, but you'll be, Imean tell me if I'm wrong but I
see you also advocating forthem. I feel like a lot of
artists, and you know this, we,I mean I say we, Ive done like
a few pieces, but we can sellourselves short, you know, like
we might not all know the rulesand you know the pricing of
things, so we say, okay, this iswhat my worth is and this is the
(25:08):
best I can get. If you were tobe working under a directory or
an umbrella, you'll have thewillpower or the power to
advocate for them and say, thisis what you deserve as an
artist, you know, forget, youknow, like color for a second
here, this is you as a talentedreally artist what you deserve.
And not only you're here becauseyour voice matters,
(25:29):
representation matters, but yourtalent needs to be recognized
and paid fairly. I think thatwill be a very crucial part of
it. The fact that you're gettingpaid what you deserve.
That's another part of DistillCreative that I'm looking to
develop is just having, to yourpoint of what were you talking
about with lockss, having moretransparency around things,
because a lot of artists,whether they're doing a mural or
a site-specific thing orcommunity engagement, they might
(25:51):
not know that there is realmoney for this stuff, it's just
sometimes you have to ask forit, sometimes you have to
educate people on it, but it allstarts with valuing your work,
which is hard if you haven't hadthat opportunity yet or if
people expect to get things fora low price or for free from you
and you're just thankful for theopportunity, you know?
Jordana Vasquez (26:08):
For the portfolio.
Stephanie Eche (26:09):
Right. Yeah, I've heard from a lot of the
interviews I've done from muralartists, theyre like, don't
ever do a mural for free, butalso my first mural I did for
free, you know, its this weirdthing.
Yeah. Communitys everything,bouncing ideas from each other's
everything, so go for it.
Are you an artist? Submit yourportfolio at
distillcreative.com/artists.
You'll get on our DistillDirectory, our artists database
(26:31):
and be considered for upcomingart commissions.
I really liked your blog postthat you did for Urbanonsite
called Congrats on Obtaining theEnvironmental Job of Your
Dreams. There is Just One Issue;Nobody Looks Like You in the
Office. We'll definitely link tothis in the show notes, but can
you explain a little bit aboutthat?
That post, funny enough came afew days before the, you know,
(26:57):
the second wave of civil rightsmovement that we find ourselves
in. It happened at a momentwhere I was going through a lot
of self reflection of like, isthis the right place I want to
be in, the right workingenvironment, you know, as part
of COVID, we were all locked infor weeks, and not only there's
a lot of work to be done, butthere's a lot of moments of you
had to kind of analyze thesituation of right, this is
(27:20):
where I'm at and is this what Iwant in life. And you know, we
all went through all thoselittle self reflecting moments
throughout those weeks, or theycame in April, I would say. I
was struggling a lot with whatit meant to be a woman of color
in sustainability. I would sayperhaps because of WOC/CS, I'm
daily, I'm exposed to this kindof work daily. I'm exposed to
(27:42):
stories of women that are facingnot only microaggressions or
facing like maybe why am I notbeing promoted if I been here
I think that you put it so well,right now and in the post that
for four years, and so and sohas been here for six months and
I've been in so many otherprojects and recognize, but my
boss doesnt see me. As part ofWOC/CS we have a template that
you have to fill out and say whydo you want to be part of this?
(28:05):
And there's a section that asksyou why do you want to be part
of WOC/CS, tell us. And there'sso many different comments there
of like, I just don't find thatpeople see me and I want to find
other people who look like methat can understand my
experiences and my, you know,what I go through at work. So
there was a lot of momentsagain, self reflection through
COVID, being home, and justhaving the time to finally sit
(28:25):
down with my thoughts. I saidone day, I was like, you know, I
was gonna put all my thoughtsinto one place and try to make a
connection with what does itmean to me being a woman of
color in sustainability. And youknow, the more that I wanted to
find examples of leadershipbeing represented by a woman of
color, I just couldn't findthem, enough, I mean, there was
a few. And thanks to WOC/CS I'vebeen able to meet a few, but
(28:47):
theres just not that many. So Iwas struggling with that. I was
struggling with the fact that assoon as they're, and this
happened, as we all know, inJune and May, as soon as there's
some issue that relates tosocial injustice, or Black Lives
Matter, and you're the person ofcolor in the room, everyone
looks at you for explanation,like, please, we want to learn
(29:09):
more about this, what can we do?
I'm like, wait, you shouldeducate yourself, like why, why
should all the responsibilityfall on the person of color just
because of the color of theirskin? Not everyone wants to be,
you know, a public advocate. Youknow, some of us work more
internally, we want to writethings and express ourselves
painting, we don't want toexpress ourself in a town hall.
So, that combined to the factthat I felt that in the
(29:31):
industry, there was a lack ofinitiative that linked climate
justice and environmentaljustice to the work on the
ground, that's what led me towrite this. All those feelings
were, that I mentioned at thebeginning, were factors but at
the end of the day, it justcomes up to be what does it mean
to be a person of color inenvironmental work? What does it
mean to be a person that worksin environmental work that
(29:53):
doesn't understand color, thatdoesn't understand the links
between social justice, linksbetween climate justice, and the
work that they're doing. Imentioned this to some of my
co-workers, if you're going tobe working in urban planning and
sustainability, but you don'tknow what redlining is, there's
an issue, you know. So if youdon't care about people, you
cannot care about the planet,you need to try to connect
everything together. First, lookat your home, see if your job
(30:16):
environment or the workplace istruly representative of
diversity, which is, you know,like what I alluded at the
title, and then say, we'reworking about, you know, making
the better environment, betterplanning, everything, but you
have to look inside first. Sothat's where it all sort of came
from.
(30:38):
everything is connected and whenI think of sustainability, I do
think about it as like a very,wealthy white person, upper
class thing, right? Like youwant to be in a sustainable
community, you want to compost,you want, a green roof, you want
to live in a LEED building andhave everything, solar panels on
your car, I don't know, justthat kind of utopian view of the
(30:59):
future, but it's not, it's notthat Black and brown people
don't want these things, it'sthat when I think of the
industry, I do think of it as avery white industry, because I
only see white people doing itand, and that's, that's why I
was so excited when you, whenyou started WOC/CS, there needs
to be more particularly women ofcolor, but just people of color
in the industry, because it is,it's for everyone, we can't
survive as a race withouteveryone, like as a human race.
Jordana Vasquez (31:22):
Right.
Stephanie Eche (31:23):
What do you think, is the role of the artist
in all of this, and how canpublic art or the use of public
spaces be more connected withsustainability both on a
planning side, and then also asa user of public space, or as a
producer of art?
Jordana Vasquez (31:37):
I can speak a little bit from experience here.
I think, well the way I see art,we turn to art where, especially
in moments of like despair, andmoments where we're feeling
uncertain, we turn to art to geta reaction and to get our
feelings expressed, and also tore-experience basic emotions.
And what I mean by that is like,sometimes we want to watch a
(31:58):
movie just for the sake ofcrying. Sometimes we want to
watch a movie just for the sakeof laughing, sometimes we want
to go out and see art just forthe sake of having, you know, a
reaction. And sometimes artcomes to you without you seeking
for it, you're walking by aplace and you see a mural, let's
say that is socially consciousor has a message and you're
(32:19):
looking at it and there's areaction, and that reaction, as
an artist, that's what you seekin the beginning, but after you
get their initial reaction as anartist you're seeking what are
the actions that a person or sheor he are going to take. I feel
like as an, as a public art,artists and mural or any kind of
art, getting that first initialconversation of like this is,
(32:42):
you know, I feel a certain wayand recognizing what the feeling
is, and recognizing that youhave the power of not only
making people eitheruncomfortable, which it's okay,
as artists, people should getcomfortable with having people
being uncomfortable. Andhopefully that's going to either
strike a conversation and wantspeople who are observing it or
(33:02):
interacting with it andhopefully that's going to lead
to some action to be changed. Ifeel like art is really good at
not only making very complexsubject digestible, its very
good at communicating justsocial issues. I remember, I
think this was in Portugal, inLisboa, we were walking along,
you know, some of the littlestreets that they had, it was a
(33:24):
beautiful city, but there wasthis huge mural that had a piece
about refugees. And it was oneof those very ironic pieces, you
know, like there was, therefugee was there and there was
someone kind of looking overthem, and me and my partner
looked at that piece for a fewminutes and we had a
conversation for an hour likewhat was happening in Europe at
(33:44):
a time. And I imagine the artistlooking down and saying, this is
the kind of things that I want,I want people to have
conversations about what I'mtrying to express here and
hopefully go back home and makea better choice about whatever
it is that's bothering them. AndI think, you know, in
sustainability, it's nodifferent. You want to have art
that evokes emotion andhopefully get people into not
(34:05):
only making an impact or beingmore conscious about their
decisions, but actually beingmore respectful towards each
other. Love art. I can talkabout this forever.
Stephanie Eche (34:15):
What tips do you have for an artist who wants to
collaborate specifically withsustainability organizations?
Jordana Vasquez (34:21):
I think as an artist, first I would identify
what part of sustainability theywant to work with. So, there's
so many different routes thatyou can take, you can say I'm
really interested in agricultureor I'm really interested in
energy efficiency or sustainablefashion and find one or two or
three that really call to themand find how you can use your
(34:43):
superpowers, you know, if that'dbe doing public art and talking
about how to make this, Imentioned this before, some of
the messages just moredigestible, or let's say, I've
seen great films, you know,talking about sustainability.
I've seen, Ive even seentheater shows, like small skits
about how climate changeaffects, you know, folks in New
(35:07):
York City and find your medium.
So not only first find which ofthe sustainability tracks you're
interested, find what medium youwant to use, and give that a
try. Ive heard podcasts, forexample, that are all about
sustainability, Ive heard songsabout sustainability, which I
thought they were really funny.
But you get people talking, youknow, the end of the day, people
(35:28):
are saying your name as anartist, and that's what you
want. I say, don't be shy to useyour superpowers. I've seen
artists being multi-talented indifferent facets of different
ways to express themselves andsee what organizations out there
are, you know, speak to theirvalues, or speak to their
interests, really need them.
More than ever, I think we're ina place where we need to connect
with each other, because we'reall, most of us, not all of
(35:49):
them, are socially distanced. Ifyou can really find a way of
plugging art and sustainabilitythat way, hey, you won the
jackpot.
Stephanie Eche (35:58):
Can you tell us about the WOC/CS directory, and
how someone might apply to be onit?
Jordana Vasquez (36:03):
The directory that we have, we call it a
database, came about this ideaof how do we have all the women
that are the members of our, ofWOC/CS, you know, in one place
where we can easily identifythem. Not only know their names,
but also know their experience,also know where they're working
at, or where they want to beworking at. And have people that
(36:26):
are either interested in findingwomen of color in sustainability
to have those experiences, andmatchmaking, or also use their
interests to come up withdifferent events. Like if I see
that I have 50% of the women inthe directory, who are really
good at farming, for example,that lets me know, they're like,
there's an opportunity here toengage with more work towards
(36:48):
farming. I've had people reachout to us, often, employing a
new person into my team and Ireally want this person to be a
woman, I'm all about mentorship,I'm all about, you know,
different values and things likethat and I'm really looking for
a very specific profile, and Ifeel like someone from your
members could fit into mycompany. And that could be
(37:08):
either, it has been fromsometimes from women of color
themselves that they want tolook into bringing that profile
in and that experience, andsometimes it hasn't. It was a
little bit difficult to say,okay, you know, Joanna, lets
say, I know a bunch of peoplethat I can connect you with,
let's go one by one. So we saywhat about we just bring
everyone in house one out of aset, people who are seeking to
(37:30):
engage a woman of color insustainability for either a
podcast, let's say or for aspeaking gig or short term
contract, or full time positioncan find them. And also, for
women who are looking forsimilar, full time or contract,
they can go there with theirexperience, and boom, we can do
the matchmaking. It has beenquite useful. Hopefully, when we
(37:53):
move towards more of a techenabled platform, it will be
more user friendly, where peopleare just gonna instantly,
hopefully, match.
Stephanie Eche (37:59):
Is it up yet?
Can anyone access it?
Jordana Vasquez (38:02):
So, the way it works right now, we have the, we
are able to see who submitstheir, you know, their profile
and if someone contacts us for,let's say, particular profile
looking for someone who works inpublic art murals, we go to the
database, and we say, okay,there's two people that match
what you're looking for, I'mgonna send them an email. But
(38:24):
it's not as a, it's not a publicdirectory where other people can
automatically see, yet. It'sjust right now, it's a very
simple Excel spreadsheet. Soit's not as refined as we want
it to, once we have a little bitmore, I would say, work on the
back end, it's a little bit moretechie, I think that way would
probably make it a little moreinteresting for folks to
(38:47):
navigate.
Stephanie Eche (38:47):
Yeah, that's exactly the issue I'm running
through because I have adatabase of artists, of public
artists, but it's like, I mean,it does become a question and
something I've been thinking of,as far as like, I want to help
expose these, help expose peopleto these resources, but also, as
a business owner, how much ofthat access do I want to
control? Because I foresee itcould be like a subscription
service, or it could be likehere are the featured artists
(39:09):
now, but if you want access tothe full database, you can pay a
subscription, and free foranybody to apply, obviously, to
be on it. But on the flip, whynot just have it be open, but
it's not, it's not so much forme, like I don't want people to
have the information, it's just,it's a lot of work. So,
literally upload all the files,upload the photo and make sure
everything's correct and thenI'd have to pay somebody to
(39:31):
basically have a system thatallows you to self edit and
update and you know, whoever isapplying to it, so it becomes,
yeah, it's totally like a techthing where I don't necessarily
want to put money intomaintaining something that I'm
not making money off of, yet,but I also don't want to create
it just to make money off of it.
So it's a weird thing.
Jordana Vasquez (39:49):
I mean, I think that there's, there's honestly
true value on having a plug forwork. If you're able to work out
the kinks of matching peopleautomatically. I know for
example, like TaskRabbit, right,you tell TaskRabbit I want
someone who has experienceputting shelves up and that's
available on Sunday. Andliterally within seconds, you're
matched with someone that hasthose skills. But whoever is, I
(40:11):
guess the other flip side, theyhave to pay a subscription to be
able to, to be, you know, tofind someone, or I guess, like
if I were to be hiring someone,I would pay a little bit, it
would be baked in whatever Ipay.
Stephanie Eche (40:23):
Right, right.
Jordana Vasquez (40:24):
And if you are, let's say, one of the members
who are putting theirinformation they shouldn't pay,
but whoever, like if you're abig organization and you're
looking to hire an artist, Ithink you can shed a couple
dollars to access the directory.
Stephanie Eche (40:38):
Right.
Jordana Vasquez (40:39):
Not giving you business ideas, but I think
there's value to be added toyour time to put you know, a
profile of someone out there.
Stephanie Eche (40:48):
Definitely. And it seems like it's working out
for you with the WOC/CSdirectory that people come to
you anyway for these questionsAnd now you have this thing, and
you can really just lift peopleup using, because they've
submitted to it right? Whatadvice would you give to someone
who wants to pursue a careersimilar to yours?
Jordana Vasquez (41:04):
I would say that they shouldn't think about
whatever their initialprofession is, and I mean,
initial by whatever you went toschool with, for. Whatever you,
whatever you went to school forsomething that's going to be
linear, and constant. I went toschool for architecture, and
every single summer for fouryears, I tried a different
internship. So the firstinternship I did was working for
(41:26):
an art gallery, and I got towork with artists who were put
in art displays of art, but Igot to work with artists that
were doing really cool work andartists that were also
architects. The summer afterthat, I decided I wanted to do
something more impact driven. SoI worked for another company,
not an artist this time, butworking with families that were
(41:47):
looking to build their homes,you know, put equity there and
it was a lot of fun. There was acomplete different side of
architecture that I didn't evenknow existed. And the third year
is similar thing. So I, by thetime I ended my bachelor, I had
friends who said, you know, Ihad four solid summers working
in this internship, I'm justgoing to go back to them when I
(42:08):
graduate, and I went up to them,well, I'm going to travel, I'm
going to try to find, you know,inspiration somewhere else and
I'm going to make a decision,which of the four different
areas that I explored, I want togo in. I would say, the best
advice I can give anyone wouldbe to explore, not only fields
within you know, sustainabilityor architecture or policy, but
(42:29):
really try to meet people who dodifferent things with your same
degree or your same experienceand see what took them there. In
my case, the best thing I cansay is you don't have to be a
subject matter expert ateverything, but you have to be
an expert at asking the rightquestions. So I think curiosity
will lead you way further than avery limited set of skills. And
(42:52):
that has been proven, you know,to work for me, Ive been in
different, wearing differentprofessional hats, the last
five, six years for that samereason, just asking, asking,
asking, how can I be part ofthis? Do you need an extra hand
on this project? Why is this,who is this affecting? Why is
this affecting these people? Howcan we- and it was just a
constant of asking questionuntil the people were just like,
(43:12):
okay, let me just give you arole in this because you seem to
be really interested. So yeah,don't be a subject matter
everything. We don't need moreof them. Just be very curious
and open minded.
Stephanie Eche (43:21):
That's great advice. Do you have a failure
that you learned from that youwant to share?
Jordana Vasquez (43:25):
I have many failures. But I would say I
recently took a test, apersonality test that it's one
of those, you know, are you aperson who likes teams, or
you're more independent, oryou're more dominant, whatever
and it made me realize thatwithin my specific profiles,
there's a lot of challenges, butalso pros and cons, lets put
(43:47):
it limitations and advantages. Iwas thinking a lot about that
like, okay, so I guess I'm thistype of person, I have this kind
of pet peeve. But it also mademe realize that there's a
different set of groups, and Iwill call them the East who I
just, it was immediate, Iclicked and I said, these are
the kind of people I don't workwell with. And the reason I
probably didn't work well withis because I didn't understand
(44:08):
what their leadership or theirwork style was. Maybe I didn't
make the effort to do it beforeto really understand that, so
because we didn't work or meshtogether, I immediately thought
there's no relationship that Ican really take further. So the
biggest failure would have beennot understanding different
leadership styles andrecognizing that we all react to
(44:29):
different things different ways.
We all react to conflictdifferent way, differently, and
that we also need as differentpersonalities, different kinds
of affirmation or validation. SoI think if I were to, you know,
retake that test, or going backto your previous question of
what advice do you have, I willalso add there that you should
be able to once you're workingin a new environment or even
(44:50):
with your partners and friends,try to understand what their
leadership style is, try to seehow yours and hers or yours and
his mesh. What are thelimitations and try to foresee
what could be commonconfrontations you might have
before even having them becauseyou have a good understanding of
what your challenges are andwhat their challenges currently
(45:10):
are. That's a very general one.
But trust me, when I understoodthat, you know, like these are
the challenges that I have andthe sort of challenges x, y
people have it, it really made adifference for me, it's like,
oh, this is why, this is whythat didn't work, that
conversation went the wrong way,or et cetera, et cetera, so,
yeah.
Stephanie Eche (45:30):
That's great advice, too, for even people who
do contract work, or artists whowork with different types of
clients. It's hard to know howsomeone's going to react to
something, but if you have asense of what their leadership
style might be, you cananticipate what issues might
come up and then be moreprepared. You might not be able
to avoid them, but at least,like I have clients, sometimes
I'm like, okay, I know howthey're gonna act about certain
(45:51):
things, so I can just navigatethat without being shocked every
time.
Jordana Vasquez (45:56):
I know, you become sort of like a, was
another synonym for medium,someone that can predict certain
things, you know, like, wow,you're in my head already, even
before I thought of that.
Stephanie Eche (46:08):
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Is there anything you've read orlistened to that's inspired you
recently?
Jordana Vasquez (46:42):
Yeah, I recently just, I just finished
actually, this morning, a bookby Tara Westover, book Educated.
You know, I was reflecting onthis the other day, not because,
her upbringing and my upbringingwere very different, she you
know, grew up in Idaho and aMormon family, very
conservative, and very limitedopinions and things like that.
(47:03):
But you know, she eventuallygets out of her way to earn
education and travels abroad andbecomes this whole different
person than what she expected tobe. So I reflected a little bit
about my own upbringing, I grewup in Dominican Republic, I
don't know if a lot of peopleknow that, but I was in
Dominican Republic until I wasshy of 20. So I came here as an
(47:25):
adult, and a lot of what Iconsider myself, like my core
memories now and core center ofwho I am as a person, what my
beliefs are and my values andthings like that, I can honestly
say that they probably have beendefined the last 10 years. A lot
of it having to do with beingexposed to different opinions
then my own and differentcultural values and its just
(47:48):
something very rich in being ina place like New York City where
everyone's almost different thanyou. Everyone has a different
experience than you and it addsso much more to your own
critical thinking and how yousee the world and how you
experience and how you navigatethat I felt, you know, back in
where I grew up, I love mycountry, I love my city and my
people, I'm not saying in anegative way at all, but I had
(48:12):
very limited and very formedopinions about a lot of things
that I didn't really know about,just because I would see it on
TV and would read it in books,but it wasn't actually until I
was here that I was like, oh,wow, this is completely
different from what I thoughtthis was. This is a completely
different culture and this is sointeresting and it just, it was
always a moment of I can say oflike unconditioned behavior that
(48:35):
you have to go through in NewYork City. So that book reminded
me a lot of that, again, not,you know, not parallel stories,
but the art of finding yourselfthrough not being your, lets
say, like dedicated to who youwere in the beginning of your
life to being open to completelyevolving throughout the rest of
your 20s and 30s and whateveryears come.
Stephanie Eche (48:56):
That's a great book suggestion. I haven't read
it yet, but we'll link to it inthe show notes. Is there
anything else?
Jordana Vasquez (49:01):
I would say to your members who are listening,
to artists, sign up for WOC/CS,sign up for the newsletter, how
to outline everything from jobopportunities to funding, try to
keep it open to not only nerds,archetypes and stuff like that,
engineers, want to have thecreatives out there. If you have
an interest in sustainability,you're more than welcome into
(49:22):
our WOC/CS family and yeah, comein. Doors are open.
Stephanie Eche (49:26):
Awesome. Yeah, I am signed up for WOC/CS and it's
been a great resource for me.
It's inspiring because you getto see things that you could
actually apply for or you know,particularly if you work in
sustainability, but also it doescover a bunch of different
things that relate to it. Alsoknowing how much is going on,
it's really cool, there's just,you both do a really good job of
finding opportunities andfinding the beat of
(49:46):
sustainability. It's nice tojust see that people are doing
the work and people like me orpeople who look like me are
doing the work and that makes meable to sleep better at night.
It's like you don't have to doeverything, right, you can, you
can help lift each other upbecause people are going to
continue to do the work and Ithink particularly at this
moment in time where, for me,it's easy to get kind of caught
(50:07):
in a spiral of all the badthings that are happening or the
people who don't get it, or thepeople who seem to still not get
it, it's really inspiring to seeyour newsletter of no, we get
it, we're doing it and we'rejust gonna keep pushing people
forward who are doing the work.
Thank you for all the work youdo with it.
(50:28):
It's a lot, but it's definitelyvery rewarding work. So I'm
happy to amplify your voice andany other voice of women of
color. That's what we're herefor.
Awesome. Where can our listenersconnect with you online?
Jordana Vasquez (50:38):
Sure. So we have a couple of different
outlets, we have Instagram,which is @woc__cs, we have
Twitter with the same handle, wehave LinkedIn, we have a
LinkedIn group that's reallyactive. That's where we go for
job opportunities. So we'realways posting if not daily,
every other day about anythingfrom energy to policy to
(51:02):
creative. We have a website, soeverything WOC/CS related from
events, way to connect, mediumpublish applications, you can
find it there. The last thing Iwould say email,
womenofcolor.cs@gmail.com.
Stephanie Eche (51:14):
Well, we'll link to everything in the show notes
and I again, want everyone tosign up for your newsletter and
find you, connect with youonline. Also urbanonsite.com so
you can read Jordis blog posts,and yeah, thank you so much for
chatting with me today.
Jordana Vasquez (51:29):
Oh, thank you.
This was a lot of fun, staysafe, stay healthy, and I'll
talk to you soon.
Stephanie Eche (51:33):
You too, okay, bye.
Thanks so much for watching thisepisode of First Coat. If you
liked this video, pleasesubscribe and check out the next
episode in our playlist. Let meknow what else you want to learn
about public realm art in thecomments below. And follow us on
Instagram @firstcoatpodcast or@distillcreative. First Coat is
(51:54):
a production of my company,Distill Creative. Check us out
at distillcreative.com.
Welcome to First Coat. Where we explore public
realm art, how it's made and whyit matters. I'm your host,
Stephanie Eche, an artist andentrepreneur based in Brooklyn,
New York. I run DistillCreative, where I curate and
produce site-specific artprojects for real estate
developers. I focus on creatingmore equitable and inclusive
projects and I want to get moreexposure for the artists and
(00:23):
developers doing this work.
Happy New Year, everyone. Thankyou so much for listening to the
First Coat podcast. I am sohappy you are here. I have a
very special bonus episode foryou this week to finish off
season one. As you may know, Istarted working on this podcast
in March of 2020, when I wasstuck at home and well, I'm
still social distancing andstaying at home, but I have
released 12 episodes of theFirst Coat podcast and this will
(00:46):
be number 13. If you haven'tlistened to episodes one through
12, please go check them out. Iinterviewed some amazing mural
artists and we discusseverything from how to use
parachute cloth to how to make acreative brief for client. I'll
be releasing Season Two of theFirst Coat podcast in about a
month. For the next season, I'llbe doing some shorter episodes
that explore the nuts and boltsof public art, as well as some
(01:07):
book reviews and how I startedthis podcast. I want to know
what you want to know about artand public space, so please
email me your questions atStephanie@distillcreative.com.
That's S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E @D-I-S-T-I-L-L creative.com.
Also, if you would like tosupport this podcast, find me on
Patreon atpatreon.com/firstcoat. For as
(01:29):
little as $1 a month, you canhelp keep this podcast going.
Okay, now for our final episodeof Season One. This week on
First Coat we have JordanaVasquez. Jordana and I met at a
placemaking conference a fewyears ago and we've stayed in
touch ever since. Jordanastudied architecture and has
worked in design, art, communitydevelopment, and sustainability.
She recently co-founded Women ofColor Collective in
(01:52):
Sustainability, WOC/CS, whichfacilitates strategic exchanges
between Black, Indigenous,People of Color sustainability
pioneers, climate justiceorganizers, and advocacy groups
to fight inequity and addressclimate change. On this episode,
we talk about how she and herco-founder started WOC/CS, her
experience leading a grassrootspublic art project, her project
Urbanonsite, and what it's liketo be the only woman of color in
(02:14):
the room, which I also couldrelate to, having the same
experiences. We brainstormbusiness development for both
Distill Creative and WOC/CS andhow we're creating our own
directories. Jordana also shareshow to use a personal project to
connect with changemakers andartists around the world,
thoughts on the role of publicart, how to collaborate with
sustainability organizations,and tips for career development.
(02:35):
Please note, this interview wasrecorded in July of 2020. Here's
our conversation.
Thank you so much for being onFirst Coat. I'm really excited
to chat with you today. Can youtell us a little bit about who
you are and what you do?
Jordana Vasquez (02:48):
Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.
So what I do, ooh, that's thatheavy loaded question because
I've been able to wear a lot ofdifferent hats throughout my
professional journey. So maybeinstead of saying the title
right away and saying myprofessional current position, I
can tell you a little bit aboutthe words that describe me and
then well take it from there. Iam a curious person, I always
(03:11):
try to find connections betweenpeople and places and spaces,
and you know this, we connectedover placemaking. So I try to
always find a way of connectingmy background in architecture
with the work that I currentlydo with sustainability and just
asking questions, and I thinkthat's what's been one constant
in my professional journey. Thesecond thing I would mention, I
(03:33):
am a social connector. I am notan extroverted person, by any
means, I am sociable, but I doenjoy building relationships and
building genuine relationships.
And I'll talk a little bit abouthow that got into play with
WOC/CS. Third thing that I canthink of would be changemaker
slash social impact agent. And Iwould say this one can bit get a
(03:54):
little bit technical, I amtrained as an architect, I went
to architecture school at PrattInstitute, I graduated a couple
years ago. Not to give away any,any age but it was 2014. And
since then, I've worked indifferent capacities, worked in
architecture firms, interiordesign, design build. Found my
way navigating the construction,architecture side of things and
(04:18):
social impact with economicdevelopment and work with
Hurricane Sandy. I think at thetime you and I met, I was
probably working at one of theseorganizations. So from that
work, I eventually had anopportunity to go more into
sustainability, energy efficientspecifically, using the skills
from an architecture andconstruction and but also the
(04:41):
technical part of it andimplement it to new
construction. So highperformance buildings, working
with programs like LEED andNYSERDA, and Enterprise green
communities, actually having aseat with the designers and the
architects that were working onthese projects and making sure
that their buildings were themost high efficient and
(05:02):
sustainable building that it canbuild. That's in a nutshell, a
little bit of everything that Iwould say would be on my resum.
There is a bunch of other thingsthat are not there, but
hopefully a little splash ofcreativity and all of those,
that would be a constant.
Stephanie Eche (05:18):
Can you tell us about your heart of the maker
project?
Jordana Vasquez (05:20):
So that was a project for my venture
Urbanonsite. So Hands Of TheMaker was a, well a little bit
of context. This was part ofSTooPS, so STooPS in Brooklyn,
it's a yearly gathering ofartists, the initiatives led by
an artist by the name, KendraRoss. She's a phenomenal artist
and she's a dancer amongst manyother things in the visual arts
(05:43):
world, and she had this ideathat she wanted to bring public
art to BedStuy and she wanted tohave the artists be from BedStuy
or have lived in BedStuy had aconnection to the community, and
it was an array of, you know,dancers, there's a little bit of
like, performance, spoken words,and visual arts. So I was living
(06:04):
in BedStuy at the time, we justrecently moved, I can't remember
exactly a year, I submitted apitch for doing a mural with
mosaics called the Hands Of TheMaker. It was part of my work
with Urbanonsite, which is aplatform for work with content
and photography for sustainablebusiness. So that was the
original, my creative outlet,like my excuse to meet artists
(06:25):
and my excuse to learn aboutthem. For this particular
project, I wanted to map outBrooklyn. So I was running
around the whole city findingmaps where I could find them,
like the subway, old magazines,you name it, found recycled
materials from differentcompanies were selling tiles. So
you imagine me in the city nextto Home Depot with a bunch of
(06:46):
tile pieces that[INDISTINGUISHABLE]. I put them
all together, I mapped it outthe exercise that I wanted my
part of the community to do wascome in, see it as a puzzle, and
try to put the puzzle togetherof the map of Brooklyn. And the
interesting part of that was tosee what kind of conversations
were going to take place. Werepeople just going to be fixated
(07:07):
in the idea of making the map,or were they going to be talking
about like, oh, I lived in thisneighborhood or my family's from
here, which was eventually whathappened. People were talking
about like, yeah, I grew up inEast Flatbush, and this, I know
for sure that this part goeshere. It was fun. I mean, I had
a great time. Ive not doneanything like that ever since,
but the program, the initiativestill happens, every year, if
(07:30):
you look up STooPS Brooklyn,there gonna be a lot of
interesting public arthappening.
Stephanie Eche (07:36):
That's awesome.
I remember you talking aboutthat project. It's like a
casual, but also complicatedapproach, right, to public art.
Because anytime you engage withthe public, it becomes more
complicated, but if you didn'tdo that, then it wouldn't really
be as I think maybe impactful.
I think it was interesting tosee how the public was going to
react because I think we all hadan idea of like, this is
(07:57):
probably what's going to happen.
But if you just let the art beor the pieces be and see how
people, you know, start eitherconfiguring the pieces or
interpreting their understandingof what they were looking at. It
was completely different fromthe idea that you had at the
beginning. I noticed that withthe dances or the spoken words
and people's reactions werereally, really diverse, I would
say.
Where are you living now? Didyou, did you move since then?
(08:18):
So, this is 2017. I moved acrossBrooklyn, so I lived in Ditmas
Park and from Ditmus I moved toPark Slope, and from Park Slope
I moved to Hoboken, so Im inNew Jersey now. Im in Hoboken.
Oh wow. That's why I don't seeyou that often. I'm just
I know. It's been, it's beeninteresting because I was the
kidding.
first person who said I'll nevermoved back to New Jersey and
(08:40):
here I am, trying to convincefriends to come out for lunch or
dinner. It's a beautiful place.
I love it. So I, it's hard forme to go back to Brooklyn and
come back at night the wholestory, but I would do it.
How has your relationshipchanged with pre-COVID commuting
into the city and then now thatyou don't have to?
Its weird. I mean, just like inBrooklyn, I had everything that
(09:01):
I needed within a mile. I hadthe stores and entertainment and
the park, where for COVID weknow you, we've been in a bubble
ever since March, I had to leavethe house because I had to take
care of family members thatwere, you know, hospitalized. So
I had to go back to the city allthe time. But my partner who was
working in the city, he had tostay here for four months. For
(09:22):
me, I did everything fromgetting to, from being the only
single person inside the bus at7am to go to city and trying not
to breathe and move to takingcabs to walking and taking the
subway, it was, you know it'sscary. The whole commuting, that
whole navigating the city. Thecity, if you go, I don't know
how it is now because I haven'tbeen in for last few weeks, at
(09:44):
the beginning of April it waslike ghost town, everyone Wall
Street, because I was there,nobody was there. You only saw
like the black and brown folksworking but it was, where are
all the Wall Street people therein there.
Yeah, I just happened to be atBryant Park today, actually and
it was really weird, becausethere were still people, but it
wasn't, it wasn't how itnormally is, you know, but it's
(10:07):
just super bizarre. That was thesecond time I've been in
Manhattan since March and itmakes me sad, but it's also, I
don't know, it's just, it'sdepressing thinking about all
the lives that have been lostand the things that could have
been avoided. But on the otherhand, forcing people to utilize
public spaces for their dailyneeds, it's kind of interesting.
Like, you can't go insideanywhere.
Jordana Vasquez (10:26):
Right.
Stephanie Eche (10:27):
You have to, like have a meeting in the park
or whatever.
Jordana Vasquez (10:30):
I saw that happen with the initiatives from
the parklets in Midtown. How,yeah, how like, had that became
an idea. You know, let'sexperiment with this open space
here and see what happens andnow they're using that template
or that model across the wholecity for restaurants. That's
such an interesting thing. Younever thought that that was
going to be the normal thatwe're living now.
Stephanie Eche (10:51):
Totally. I think, though, it's like, and
I'm curious about yourperspective on this, but it's
like everything that I loveabout public space is now like,
my worst nightmare, because it'sin a pandemic, right? So it's
like, great, all the restaurantscan be out on the street, or in
these really cute parklets, butshould we really be serving
people right now? And then, youknow, this like encouraging
(11:11):
gathering, even though weshouldn't be? It's just very
confusing.
I think, you know, it'sfortunate, unfortunate that
like, the situation that we'rein here now, because I've been
in places where I've had theoption to dine in, and I
immediately, you know, I thinkit twice, I think about how
close am I going to be to thetable next to me or like, how's
(11:31):
the air going to transferbetween us, and I felt, through
experience, a little bit more atease with the restaurants that
had an open space, either in theback or the front. So I'm a
little bit grateful that we'regetting creative with like, how
are we, you know, sociallydistancing in recreational
activities and things like that.
I find it very interesting howfolks are doing in parks and how
I keep seeing photos of like,either doing circles in the
(11:54):
ground, to state that this isthe physical distance that we
need from each other, or likehow nature itself has served
kind of a barrier between spacesand people just getting, you
know, excited and creative aboutdoing this. So I think we just
have to, we have to give peopleoptions. Ideally, we would all
be, you know, I would thinkbetter protected and more
(12:15):
conscious of each other. Butfrom what I've seen, like that,
our 25 year old neighbors don'twant to be held home, it is
pretty sad that I feel like as a30 year old something, I'm here
protected and everything, and Iwant to do the right thing. But
I also understand that tellingthem not to go out and telling
them not to do this doesn't getme anywhere. So the best thing I
can do is hope for a designer tocome up with the spaces that
(12:40):
restricts them from going, youknow, too close to each other
and hope for the best that theyrespect those barriers.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about Urbanonsite?
Yeah. Urbanonsite came about, Iwould say 2015, Summer 2015, was
right when I started Liske, andit was during the period where I
was transitioning fromarchitecture and I wanted to do
(13:02):
something more impactful. Iquickly learned working at lisk,
that as architects we had twodifferent options, we can do
business as usual, you know,high rise buildings, thinking
about aesthetics and make it afunction and that said, or we
had another option, which washow are we going to be designing
the cities that are going to besustainable, more self reliant,
(13:25):
more efficient. So I waslearning so much about
sustainability and whatsustainability meant, from a
resiliency perspective,especially. Thinking about
floods and thinking abouthurricanes, because that was the
scope of the work back then, andI just needed a place where I
could not only brainstorm, butalso learn and, and share that
(13:45):
knowledge. But I'm also anarchitect, so I had to make it
creative and make it fun. So Isaid, I'm going to create a
platform that I will use notonly as a creative outlet, but
also to learn about projects andconnect with people. And it has
been, I would say probably themost constant project in my life
because there's always somethingI want to write and share or
(14:07):
there's something of projectphotography that I want to do.
Thanks to, I would say to thatplatform, I've been able to
connect with people in NewOrleans and what I would do is
every time I travel, let's sayCuba or Thailand or New Orleans,
a couple of weeks before I go, Iwould reach out to a local
artist or a local change agentand say hey, I read about your
(14:27):
project, your permaculture inOahu and I'm going to be there
for a couple of days, can I comeover? and people are super open
to explain to you that they havethis permaculture farming in
their backyard and you shouldcome over for dinner and learn
about it, which happened or theywould tell you, hey, if youre
in New Orleans, let me show youthese murals that I did. I might
as well take you barhopping thewhole day and show you the city
(14:50):
through my perspective and thathappened as well. So I would say
Urbanonsite has been my youknow, like I mentioned, my
creative outlet, but also apoint of me to go out there and
seek those questions and seekthose answers that I'm not able
to get through my job becauseI'm intentional about doing this
on another space, anothermedium.
That's what, I think what I likeso much about it, is that it's
(15:12):
not just one subject, it'severything, but it also is
related, you know, everything'srelated and you really do a good
job of tying it back to your ownpersonal experience and opening
the door to what differentpeople are doing in different
places. And I love thatphilosophy of reaching out to
people, researching before youtravel. It's one of the things I
kind of hate about Airbnbexperiences, because they
(15:33):
commodify that in a certain way,but I'm not against that as an
activity, right? Like, we shouldall be connecting with human
beings when we go places, asopposed to just taking the photo
and then moving on.
And I think for, I'm thinking,well, let me see one particular
example, people, not only dothey want to share the story
with you, like if you come up tosomeone and you say, look, I do
(15:53):
this kind of work, like I did,for example, in Miami, during
our basic, you know what I mean.
Jordana Vasquez (15:59):
We were there for the week and looking at the
Yeah.
art pieces, and moving throughthe city and we connected with
the guy who owned an urban farmin the middle of Miami, like
this is, you know, full onalmost permaculture regenerative
farm in the middle of nowhere.
And we said, you know, we wantto come and check it out and
we're gonna take the mostbeautiful photos of your farm
(16:19):
and write a story about it,would you be interested, and
he's like, yes, I would love tosee, you know, the photography
that you come up with and stufflike that and Ill let you know
about, you know, the storybehind this, and it was the
loveliest afternoon, we came in,we learned so much about, when I
say we my printer because myprinter always comes everywhere
I go. We did the photo shoot andit was just such a great
(16:39):
experience and people are superreceptive to that, in my
experience.
Stephanie Eche (16:43):
I'll definitely link to Urbanonsite in the show
notes so everybody can see theseawesome blog posts and your
photography. How did thatdevelop into, or how did you
develop the idea for WOC/CS,Woman Of Color, Collective
Sustainability? And did thoseinspire each other or were they
just completely separate things?
So as part of WOC/CS, well,lets start Urbanonsite, let's
(17:05):
start there. I would also go todifferent events throughout
climate week or eventsthroughout the year, in New York
City, we have the opportunitythat there's events, like every
single day about every singletopic that you can think of. So
sustainability is a big hottopic, back in, it has been the
last five years and continues tobe, but in 2018, 2017, I cant
(17:27):
remember for sure, climate weekwas happening in the fall. And I
went to an event forsustainability in fashion. And I
was there and quickly realizedthat I was the only woman of
color in the room and I knew, itdidn't take long for me to
realize, almost to the pointwhere like, oh, yeah, there's
just no one that looks like me,just one more event in
sustainability and fashion, nobiggie. I look at my left, and I
(17:50):
see this woman on the other sideand you know that face of like
acknowledgement, I was like, oh,I see you, you see me and we
sort of gravitated towards eachother and, across the room and
you know, struck in conversationand realized that she was
working in sustainability andmore like a tech and venture
capital capacity, I believe atthat time, a little bit of
(18:11):
policy, and I was working atthat time in more of a green
technical design and building.
So we decided, you know, toshare contact information and
keep each other updated ofsimilar events. So we did that
for the following year, we wouldemail each other and say, hey,
there's this gathering happeningor there's an interesting
project taking place, you shouldlook into it, you should apply.
(18:31):
And a year into it, we decided,you know, we're having drinks at
Pier 17, I remember this itsJuly 2019, and we're like, you
know, this is great that we'regoing to all these events and
we're accessing all thesedifferent resources, but we
should open the door for otherwomen to also join us and to you
know, point out that there'sgreat talent over there, out
(18:52):
there, but maybe they don't knowof each other and there's not
enough community around some ofthe things that we want to do.
And leadership, you know, welooked up and we talked about a
lack of mentorship, we talkedabout a series of
microaggressions, we talkedabout similar experiences in the
environmental work and talkedabout the lack of women of color
(19:13):
in the leadership status to theboard, executive suite, you name
it. So, we said you know what,we're gonna start a community,
we're gonna start a group, acollective, let it be, and let's
have a meetup, lets have ahappy hour. I think you were
there for that one. Have a happyhour and see what happens, you
know, see if there's anyinteresting positivity for women
who are going to be interestedin this kind of event. And lo
(19:34):
and behold, we had the firstmeetup and we sold out. So we
cannot even go back to that barbecause we reached maximum
capacity. But that was anindicator that there was an
appetite in New York City andeven outside of New York City
for a community where women ofcolor with you know experience
in sustainability couldcollaborate, find resources,
find jobs, mentorship and justreally find other like-minded
(19:57):
individuals. So this was, youknow, the beginning of it. And
it has grown to be somethingmuch more bigger and beautiful
than we anticipated, I can say.
How have you been funding it?
Has this just been all labor oflove so far?
Jordana Vasquez (20:10):
So I would say a mix of those. We had our
initial capital put in, butwe've been able to do a few
events here and there. Like wetypically dont charge much, I
think, a lot of us don't do itfor the well, a lot of us,
theres two of us, we don't doit for like, okay, we need to
make a profit, at least in thebeginning, we didn't want to
make it, you know, that way. So,a lot of our events have been or
(20:32):
are still going to be free ofcharge. We eventually want to
move into the point where we doget to pay people that come and
speak at our events, we want tobe able to pay some of our
volunteers, eventually hire anintern. So we've been applying
to a lot of different grants,we've been, we've been lucky
enough to receive funds for ourlatest event, which was the
(20:54):
grant. So we're going to begranting 10 women with like $300
for you know, whatever basicneeds. So those have been, I
would say a couple differentthings with different approaches
to capital that we've had.
Eventually, we want to move intomore of a tech enabled platform,
where it could be something thatyou can navigate on your phone
or your computer to find allthings WOC/CS, from a map
(21:14):
showing all the green projectsout there led by women of color
to all the job opportunitiespresented to women of color,
waste engage. So that'seventually going to require
funding and I think love can getyou to a certain point, but
eventually, you want to be ableto either fundraise or we've
been working really hard onfunding missions. So hopefully
one of them will pan out. Nexttime you and I talk, it's gonna
(21:36):
be like, yeah, we won that one.
Stephanie Eche (21:38):
That's interesting, because that
similarly, but in a differentvein, but I do think they're
related, basically, how Ienvisioned growing, Distill
Creative, having it be a more ofa tech platform, where like
using overlays of Google Maps,and different things so I could
have basically a directory ofart in public spaces or in the
public realm, but also havebudget, background of the artist
and all of that, and thenhighlight black indigenous
(22:00):
people of color. One question Ihave actually is, so I'm
currently, I may or may not editthis out, but I'm curious on,
your directory and otherdirectories have inspired me to
want to do a directory ofartists.
Jordana Vasquez (22:12):
Yeah.
Stephanie Eche (22:13):
Specifically artists who work in public
spaces, which, as you know,could potentially be any artist,
but definitely are specificartists who are already doing
that type of work, but it issuch a closed environment, it's
hard to get in, I would say,particularly for commissioned
work by developers, which iswhat I'm specializing in right
now. So I, I'm debating what itwould be, like, should it be
(22:34):
bipoc? Should it be woman ofcolor? Should it be women and
bipoc? Or do you have anythoughts on that as far as what
might be more needed? Because Idon't, I don't want it to just,
I want it to be helpful. And ifit's not helpful, then it's not
necessary, right?
I recently came across, throughmy partner, of initiative
venture that they had an ideafor startup that they would
connect artists with public,sorry, artists with commercial
(22:56):
Right and not just because ofthe color of their skin but
buildings. So the artists wouldwork on the piece, commercial
building property managementwould have a way to access to
them, like a directory. I canlink with you later on for a
little more info, because memyself, I don't know all the
details, but for your particularproject, I would think it'd be
more interesting to have it forbipoc, so Black Indigenous
(23:17):
People of Color, just becausethere's such a wealth of
knowledge there and you can goso many different ways, if you
want to really specialize inindigenous art, there's so much
resources out there. If youwanted to specialize in Latinx
or Black, I think having thebipoc allows you an umbrella
(23:38):
that you can explore, dependingon you know, maybe one year you
explore this, so one theme couldlead you to certain kind of
artist and another theme canlead you to a different kind of
artist. So I would, I would gothat way. I think if anything,
what we've seen in the last fewmonths is an appetite for more
art, for more thought leadershipand more, you know, work being
(24:02):
represented by people of colorand Black and Indigenous and
that interest for visibility,the interest for exposure, it's
not new, it's always been there,its just that now we're getting
the recognition that we deserve,and we're not only claiming it,
we're demanding it. So I say gofor it, if this is something you
want to do, I know so manyartists that would be so happy
(24:23):
to finally find a place wheretheir art can be recognized and
easily accessible.
because there is this newinterest in it, which is weird,
at least they're going to getthe commission or the fee or
whatever and instead of- I don'twant there ever to be an excuse
like well, I couldn't find anartist that you know represents
the community or- it's too easy,I think, for people to excuse
(24:45):
away things even though thereare resources that exist.
Not only that, but you'll be, Imean tell me if I'm wrong but I
see you also advocating forthem. I feel like a lot of
artists, and you know this, we,I mean I say we, Ive done like
a few pieces, but we can sellourselves short, you know, like
we might not all know the rulesand you know the pricing of
things, so we say, okay, this iswhat my worth is and this is the
(25:08):
best I can get. If you were tobe working under a directory or
an umbrella, you'll have thewillpower or the power to
advocate for them and say, thisis what you deserve as an
artist, you know, forget, youknow, like color for a second
here, this is you as a talentedreally artist what you deserve.
And not only you're here becauseyour voice matters,
(25:29):
representation matters, but yourtalent needs to be recognized
and paid fairly. I think thatwill be a very crucial part of
it. The fact that you're gettingpaid what you deserve.
That's another part of DistillCreative that I'm looking to
develop is just having, to yourpoint of what were you talking
about with lockss, having moretransparency around things,
because a lot of artists,whether they're doing a mural or
a site-specific thing orcommunity engagement, they might
(25:51):
not know that there is realmoney for this stuff, it's just
sometimes you have to ask forit, sometimes you have to
educate people on it, but it allstarts with valuing your work,
which is hard if you haven't hadthat opportunity yet or if
people expect to get things fora low price or for free from you
and you're just thankful for theopportunity, you know?
Jordana Vasquez (26:08):
For the portfolio.
Stephanie Eche (26:09):
Right. Yeah, I've heard from a lot of the
interviews I've done from muralartists, theyre like, don't
ever do a mural for free, butalso my first mural I did for
free, you know, its this weirdthing.
Yeah. Communitys everything,bouncing ideas from each other's
everything, so go for it.
Are you an artist? Submit yourportfolio at
distillcreative.com/artists.
You'll get on our DistillDirectory, our artists database
(26:31):
and be considered for upcomingart commissions.
I really liked your blog postthat you did for Urbanonsite
called Congrats on Obtaining theEnvironmental Job of Your
Dreams. There is Just One Issue;Nobody Looks Like You in the
Office. We'll definitely link tothis in the show notes, but can
you explain a little bit aboutthat?
That post, funny enough came afew days before the, you know,
(26:57):
the second wave of civil rightsmovement that we find ourselves
in. It happened at a momentwhere I was going through a lot
of self reflection of like, isthis the right place I want to
be in, the right workingenvironment, you know, as part
of COVID, we were all locked infor weeks, and not only there's
a lot of work to be done, butthere's a lot of moments of you
had to kind of analyze thesituation of right, this is
(27:20):
where I'm at and is this what Iwant in life. And you know, we
all went through all thoselittle self reflecting moments
throughout those weeks, or theycame in April, I would say. I
was struggling a lot with whatit meant to be a woman of color
in sustainability. I would sayperhaps because of WOC/CS, I'm
daily, I'm exposed to this kindof work daily. I'm exposed to
(27:42):
stories of women that are facingnot only microaggressions or
facing like maybe why am I notbeing promoted if I been here
I think that you put it so well,right now and in the post that
for four years, and so and sohas been here for six months and
I've been in so many otherprojects and recognize, but my
boss doesnt see me. As part ofWOC/CS we have a template that
you have to fill out and say whydo you want to be part of this?
(28:05):
And there's a section that asksyou why do you want to be part
of WOC/CS, tell us. And there'sso many different comments there
of like, I just don't find thatpeople see me and I want to find
other people who look like methat can understand my
experiences and my, you know,what I go through at work. So
there was a lot of momentsagain, self reflection through
COVID, being home, and justhaving the time to finally sit
(28:25):
down with my thoughts. I saidone day, I was like, you know, I
was gonna put all my thoughtsinto one place and try to make a
connection with what does itmean to me being a woman of
color in sustainability. And youknow, the more that I wanted to
find examples of leadershipbeing represented by a woman of
color, I just couldn't findthem, enough, I mean, there was
a few. And thanks to WOC/CS I'vebeen able to meet a few, but
(28:47):
theres just not that many. So Iwas struggling with that. I was
struggling with the fact that assoon as they're, and this
happened, as we all know, inJune and May, as soon as there's
some issue that relates tosocial injustice, or Black Lives
Matter, and you're the person ofcolor in the room, everyone
looks at you for explanation,like, please, we want to learn
(29:09):
more about this, what can we do?
I'm like, wait, you shouldeducate yourself, like why, why
should all the responsibilityfall on the person of color just
because of the color of theirskin? Not everyone wants to be,
you know, a public advocate. Youknow, some of us work more
internally, we want to writethings and express ourselves
painting, we don't want toexpress ourself in a town hall.
So, that combined to the factthat I felt that in the
(29:31):
industry, there was a lack ofinitiative that linked climate
justice and environmentaljustice to the work on the
ground, that's what led me towrite this. All those feelings
were, that I mentioned at thebeginning, were factors but at
the end of the day, it justcomes up to be what does it mean
to be a person of color inenvironmental work? What does it
mean to be a person that worksin environmental work that
(29:53):
doesn't understand color, thatdoesn't understand the links
between social justice, linksbetween climate justice, and the
work that they're doing. Imentioned this to some of my
co-workers, if you're going tobe working in urban planning and
sustainability, but you don'tknow what redlining is, there's
an issue, you know. So if youdon't care about people, you
cannot care about the planet,you need to try to connect
everything together. First, lookat your home, see if your job
(30:16):
environment or the workplace istruly representative of
diversity, which is, you know,like what I alluded at the
title, and then say, we'reworking about, you know, making
the better environment, betterplanning, everything, but you
have to look inside first. Sothat's where it all sort of came
from.
(30:38):
everything is connected and whenI think of sustainability, I do
think about it as like a very,wealthy white person, upper
class thing, right? Like youwant to be in a sustainable
community, you want to compost,you want, a green roof, you want
to live in a LEED building andhave everything, solar panels on
your car, I don't know, justthat kind of utopian view of the
(30:59):
future, but it's not, it's notthat Black and brown people
don't want these things, it'sthat when I think of the
industry, I do think of it as avery white industry, because I
only see white people doing itand, and that's, that's why I
was so excited when you, whenyou started WOC/CS, there needs
to be more particularly women ofcolor, but just people of color
in the industry, because it is,it's for everyone, we can't
survive as a race withouteveryone, like as a human race.
Jordana Vasquez (31:22):
Right.
Stephanie Eche (31:23):
What do you think, is the role of the artist
in all of this, and how canpublic art or the use of public
spaces be more connected withsustainability both on a
planning side, and then also asa user of public space, or as a
producer of art?
Jordana Vasquez (31:37):
I can speak a little bit from experience here.
I think, well the way I see art,we turn to art where, especially
in moments of like despair, andmoments where we're feeling
uncertain, we turn to art to geta reaction and to get our
feelings expressed, and also tore-experience basic emotions.
And what I mean by that is like,sometimes we want to watch a
(31:58):
movie just for the sake ofcrying. Sometimes we want to
watch a movie just for the sakeof laughing, sometimes we want
to go out and see art just forthe sake of having, you know, a
reaction. And sometimes artcomes to you without you seeking
for it, you're walking by aplace and you see a mural, let's
say that is socially consciousor has a message and you're
(32:19):
looking at it and there's areaction, and that reaction, as
an artist, that's what you seekin the beginning, but after you
get their initial reaction as anartist you're seeking what are
the actions that a person or sheor he are going to take. I feel
like as an, as a public art,artists and mural or any kind of
art, getting that first initialconversation of like this is,
(32:42):
you know, I feel a certain wayand recognizing what the feeling
is, and recognizing that youhave the power of not only
making people eitheruncomfortable, which it's okay,
as artists, people should getcomfortable with having people
being uncomfortable. Andhopefully that's going to either
strike a conversation and wantspeople who are observing it or
(33:02):
interacting with it andhopefully that's going to lead
to some action to be changed. Ifeel like art is really good at
not only making very complexsubject digestible, its very
good at communicating justsocial issues. I remember, I
think this was in Portugal, inLisboa, we were walking along,
you know, some of the littlestreets that they had, it was a
(33:24):
beautiful city, but there wasthis huge mural that had a piece
about refugees. And it was oneof those very ironic pieces, you
know, like there was, therefugee was there and there was
someone kind of looking overthem, and me and my partner
looked at that piece for a fewminutes and we had a
conversation for an hour likewhat was happening in Europe at
(33:44):
a time. And I imagine the artistlooking down and saying, this is
the kind of things that I want,I want people to have
conversations about what I'mtrying to express here and
hopefully go back home and makea better choice about whatever
it is that's bothering them. AndI think, you know, in
sustainability, it's nodifferent. You want to have art
that evokes emotion andhopefully get people into not
(34:05):
only making an impact or beingmore conscious about their
decisions, but actually beingmore respectful towards each
other. Love art. I can talkabout this forever.
Stephanie Eche (34:15):
What tips do you have for an artist who wants to
collaborate specifically withsustainability organizations?
Jordana Vasquez (34:21):
I think as an artist, first I would identify
what part of sustainability theywant to work with. So, there's
so many different routes thatyou can take, you can say I'm
really interested in agricultureor I'm really interested in
energy efficiency or sustainablefashion and find one or two or
three that really call to themand find how you can use your
(34:43):
superpowers, you know, if that'dbe doing public art and talking
about how to make this, Imentioned this before, some of
the messages just moredigestible, or let's say, I've
seen great films, you know,talking about sustainability.
I've seen, Ive even seentheater shows, like small skits
about how climate changeaffects, you know, folks in New
(35:07):
York City and find your medium.
So not only first find which ofthe sustainability tracks you're
interested, find what medium youwant to use, and give that a
try. Ive heard podcasts, forexample, that are all about
sustainability, Ive heard songsabout sustainability, which I
thought they were really funny.
But you get people talking, youknow, the end of the day, people
(35:28):
are saying your name as anartist, and that's what you
want. I say, don't be shy to useyour superpowers. I've seen
artists being multi-talented indifferent facets of different
ways to express themselves andsee what organizations out there
are, you know, speak to theirvalues, or speak to their
interests, really need them.
More than ever, I think we're ina place where we need to connect
with each other, because we'reall, most of us, not all of
(35:49):
them, are socially distanced. Ifyou can really find a way of
plugging art and sustainabilitythat way, hey, you won the
jackpot.
Stephanie Eche (35:58):
Can you tell us about the WOC/CS directory, and
how someone might apply to be onit?
Jordana Vasquez (36:03):
The directory that we have, we call it a
database, came about this ideaof how do we have all the women
that are the members of our, ofWOC/CS, you know, in one place
where we can easily identifythem. Not only know their names,
but also know their experience,also know where they're working
at, or where they want to beworking at. And have people that
(36:26):
are either interested in findingwomen of color in sustainability
to have those experiences, andmatchmaking, or also use their
interests to come up withdifferent events. Like if I see
that I have 50% of the women inthe directory, who are really
good at farming, for example,that lets me know, they're like,
there's an opportunity here toengage with more work towards
(36:48):
farming. I've had people reachout to us, often, employing a
new person into my team and Ireally want this person to be a
woman, I'm all about mentorship,I'm all about, you know,
different values and things likethat and I'm really looking for
a very specific profile, and Ifeel like someone from your
members could fit into mycompany. And that could be
(37:08):
either, it has been fromsometimes from women of color
themselves that they want tolook into bringing that profile
in and that experience, andsometimes it hasn't. It was a
little bit difficult to say,okay, you know, Joanna, lets
say, I know a bunch of peoplethat I can connect you with,
let's go one by one. So we saywhat about we just bring
everyone in house one out of aset, people who are seeking to
(37:30):
engage a woman of color insustainability for either a
podcast, let's say or for aspeaking gig or short term
contract, or full time positioncan find them. And also, for
women who are looking forsimilar, full time or contract,
they can go there with theirexperience, and boom, we can do
the matchmaking. It has beenquite useful. Hopefully, when we
(37:53):
move towards more of a techenabled platform, it will be
more user friendly, where peopleare just gonna instantly,
hopefully, match.
Stephanie Eche (37:59):
Is it up yet?
Can anyone access it?
Jordana Vasquez (38:02):
So, the way it works right now, we have the, we
are able to see who submitstheir, you know, their profile
and if someone contacts us for,let's say, particular profile
looking for someone who works inpublic art murals, we go to the
database, and we say, okay,there's two people that match
what you're looking for, I'mgonna send them an email. But
(38:24):
it's not as a, it's not a publicdirectory where other people can
automatically see, yet. It'sjust right now, it's a very
simple Excel spreadsheet. Soit's not as refined as we want
it to, once we have a little bitmore, I would say, work on the
back end, it's a little bit moretechie, I think that way would
probably make it a little moreinteresting for folks to
(38:47):
navigate.
Stephanie Eche (38:47):
Yeah, that's exactly the issue I'm running
through because I have adatabase of artists, of public
artists, but it's like, I mean,it does become a question and
something I've been thinking of,as far as like, I want to help
expose these, help expose peopleto these resources, but also, as
a business owner, how much ofthat access do I want to
control? Because I foresee itcould be like a subscription
service, or it could be likehere are the featured artists
(39:09):
now, but if you want access tothe full database, you can pay a
subscription, and free foranybody to apply, obviously, to
be on it. But on the flip, whynot just have it be open, but
it's not, it's not so much forme, like I don't want people to
have the information, it's just,it's a lot of work. So,
literally upload all the files,upload the photo and make sure
everything's correct and thenI'd have to pay somebody to
(39:31):
basically have a system thatallows you to self edit and
update and you know, whoever isapplying to it, so it becomes,
yeah, it's totally like a techthing where I don't necessarily
want to put money intomaintaining something that I'm
not making money off of, yet,but I also don't want to create
it just to make money off of it.
So it's a weird thing.
Jordana Vasquez (39:49):
I mean, I think that there's, there's honestly
true value on having a plug forwork. If you're able to work out
the kinks of matching peopleautomatically. I know for
example, like TaskRabbit, right,you tell TaskRabbit I want
someone who has experienceputting shelves up and that's
available on Sunday. Andliterally within seconds, you're
matched with someone that hasthose skills. But whoever is, I
(40:11):
guess the other flip side, theyhave to pay a subscription to be
able to, to be, you know, tofind someone, or I guess, like
if I were to be hiring someone,I would pay a little bit, it
would be baked in whatever Ipay.
Stephanie Eche (40:23):
Right, right.
Jordana Vasquez (40:24):
And if you are, let's say, one of the members
who are putting theirinformation they shouldn't pay,
but whoever, like if you're abig organization and you're
looking to hire an artist, Ithink you can shed a couple
dollars to access the directory.
Stephanie Eche (40:38):
Right.
Jordana Vasquez (40:39):
Not giving you business ideas, but I think
there's value to be added toyour time to put you know, a
profile of someone out there.
Stephanie Eche (40:48):
Definitely. And it seems like it's working out
for you with the WOC/CSdirectory that people come to
you anyway for these questionsAnd now you have this thing, and
you can really just lift peopleup using, because they've
submitted to it right? Whatadvice would you give to someone
who wants to pursue a careersimilar to yours?
Jordana Vasquez (41:04):
I would say that they shouldn't think about
whatever their initialprofession is, and I mean,
initial by whatever you went toschool with, for. Whatever you,
whatever you went to school forsomething that's going to be
linear, and constant. I went toschool for architecture, and
every single summer for fouryears, I tried a different
internship. So the firstinternship I did was working for
(41:26):
an art gallery, and I got towork with artists who were put
in art displays of art, but Igot to work with artists that
were doing really cool work andartists that were also
architects. The summer afterthat, I decided I wanted to do
something more impact driven. SoI worked for another company,
not an artist this time, butworking with families that were
(41:47):
looking to build their homes,you know, put equity there and
it was a lot of fun. There was acomplete different side of
architecture that I didn't evenknow existed. And the third year
is similar thing. So I, by thetime I ended my bachelor, I had
friends who said, you know, Ihad four solid summers working
in this internship, I'm justgoing to go back to them when I
(42:08):
graduate, and I went up to them,well, I'm going to travel, I'm
going to try to find, you know,inspiration somewhere else and
I'm going to make a decision,which of the four different
areas that I explored, I want togo in. I would say, the best
advice I can give anyone wouldbe to explore, not only fields
within you know, sustainabilityor architecture or policy, but
(42:29):
really try to meet people who dodifferent things with your same
degree or your same experienceand see what took them there. In
my case, the best thing I cansay is you don't have to be a
subject matter expert ateverything, but you have to be
an expert at asking the rightquestions. So I think curiosity
will lead you way further than avery limited set of skills. And
(42:52):
that has been proven, you know,to work for me, Ive been in
different, wearing differentprofessional hats, the last
five, six years for that samereason, just asking, asking,
asking, how can I be part ofthis? Do you need an extra hand
on this project? Why is this,who is this affecting? Why is
this affecting these people? Howcan we- and it was just a
constant of asking questionuntil the people were just like,
(43:12):
okay, let me just give you arole in this because you seem to
be really interested. So yeah,don't be a subject matter
everything. We don't need moreof them. Just be very curious
and open minded.
Stephanie Eche (43:21):
That's great advice. Do you have a failure
that you learned from that youwant to share?
Jordana Vasquez (43:25):
I have many failures. But I would say I
recently took a test, apersonality test that it's one
of those, you know, are you aperson who likes teams, or
you're more independent, oryou're more dominant, whatever
and it made me realize thatwithin my specific profiles,
there's a lot of challenges, butalso pros and cons, lets put
(43:47):
it limitations and advantages. Iwas thinking a lot about that
like, okay, so I guess I'm thistype of person, I have this kind
of pet peeve. But it also mademe realize that there's a
different set of groups, and Iwill call them the East who I
just, it was immediate, Iclicked and I said, these are
the kind of people I don't workwell with. And the reason I
probably didn't work well withis because I didn't understand
(44:08):
what their leadership or theirwork style was. Maybe I didn't
make the effort to do it beforeto really understand that, so
because we didn't work or meshtogether, I immediately thought
there's no relationship that Ican really take further. So the
biggest failure would have beennot understanding different
leadership styles andrecognizing that we all react to
(44:29):
different things different ways.
We all react to conflictdifferent way, differently, and
that we also need as differentpersonalities, different kinds
of affirmation or validation. SoI think if I were to, you know,
retake that test, or going backto your previous question of
what advice do you have, I willalso add there that you should
be able to once you're workingin a new environment or even
(44:50):
with your partners and friends,try to understand what their
leadership style is, try to seehow yours and hers or yours and
his mesh. What are thelimitations and try to foresee
what could be commonconfrontations you might have
before even having them becauseyou have a good understanding of
what your challenges are andwhat their challenges currently
(45:10):
are. That's a very general one.
But trust me, when I understoodthat, you know, like these are
the challenges that I have andthe sort of challenges x, y
people have it, it really made adifference for me, it's like,
oh, this is why, this is whythat didn't work, that
conversation went the wrong way,or et cetera, et cetera, so,
yeah.
Stephanie Eche (45:30):
That's great advice, too, for even people who
do contract work, or artists whowork with different types of
clients. It's hard to know howsomeone's going to react to
something, but if you have asense of what their leadership
style might be, you cananticipate what issues might
come up and then be moreprepared. You might not be able
to avoid them, but at least,like I have clients, sometimes
I'm like, okay, I know howthey're gonna act about certain
(45:51):
things, so I can just navigatethat without being shocked every
time.
Jordana Vasquez (45:56):
I know, you become sort of like a, was
another synonym for medium,someone that can predict certain
things, you know, like, wow,you're in my head already, even
before I thought of that.
Stephanie Eche (46:08):
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Is there anything you've read orlistened to that's inspired you
recently?
Jordana Vasquez (46:42):
Yeah, I recently just, I just finished
actually, this morning, a bookby Tara Westover, book Educated.
You know, I was reflecting onthis the other day, not because,
her upbringing and my upbringingwere very different, she you
know, grew up in Idaho and aMormon family, very
conservative, and very limitedopinions and things like that.
(47:03):
But you know, she eventuallygets out of her way to earn
education and travels abroad andbecomes this whole different
person than what she expected tobe. So I reflected a little bit
about my own upbringing, I grewup in Dominican Republic, I
don't know if a lot of peopleknow that, but I was in
Dominican Republic until I wasshy of 20. So I came here as an
(47:25):
adult, and a lot of what Iconsider myself, like my core
memories now and core center ofwho I am as a person, what my
beliefs are and my values andthings like that, I can honestly
say that they probably have beendefined the last 10 years. A lot
of it having to do with beingexposed to different opinions
then my own and differentcultural values and its just
(47:48):
something very rich in being ina place like New York City where
everyone's almost different thanyou. Everyone has a different
experience than you and it addsso much more to your own
critical thinking and how yousee the world and how you
experience and how you navigatethat I felt, you know, back in
where I grew up, I love mycountry, I love my city and my
people, I'm not saying in anegative way at all, but I had
(48:12):
very limited and very formedopinions about a lot of things
that I didn't really know about,just because I would see it on
TV and would read it in books,but it wasn't actually until I
was here that I was like, oh,wow, this is completely
different from what I thoughtthis was. This is a completely
different culture and this is sointeresting and it just, it was
always a moment of I can say oflike unconditioned behavior that
(48:35):
you have to go through in NewYork City. So that book reminded
me a lot of that, again, not,you know, not parallel stories,
but the art of finding yourselfthrough not being your, lets
say, like dedicated to who youwere in the beginning of your
life to being open to completelyevolving throughout the rest of
your 20s and 30s and whateveryears come.
Stephanie Eche (48:56):
That's a great book suggestion. I haven't read
it yet, but we'll link to it inthe show notes. Is there
anything else?
Jordana Vasquez (49:01):
I would say to your members who are listening,
to artists, sign up for WOC/CS,sign up for the newsletter, how
to outline everything from jobopportunities to funding, try to
keep it open to not only nerds,archetypes and stuff like that,
engineers, want to have thecreatives out there. If you have
an interest in sustainability,you're more than welcome into
(49:22):
our WOC/CS family and yeah, comein. Doors are open.
Stephanie Eche (49:26):
Awesome. Yeah, I am signed up for WOC/CS and it's
been a great resource for me.
It's inspiring because you getto see things that you could
actually apply for or you know,particularly if you work in
sustainability, but also it doescover a bunch of different
things that relate to it. Alsoknowing how much is going on,
it's really cool, there's just,you both do a really good job of
finding opportunities andfinding the beat of
(49:46):
sustainability. It's nice tojust see that people are doing
the work and people like me orpeople who look like me are
doing the work and that makes meable to sleep better at night.
It's like you don't have to doeverything, right, you can, you
can help lift each other upbecause people are going to
continue to do the work and Ithink particularly at this
moment in time where, for me,it's easy to get kind of caught
(50:07):
in a spiral of all the badthings that are happening or the
people who don't get it, or thepeople who seem to still not get
it, it's really inspiring to seeyour newsletter of no, we get
it, we're doing it and we'rejust gonna keep pushing people
forward who are doing the work.
Thank you for all the work youdo with it.
(50:28):
It's a lot, but it's definitelyvery rewarding work. So I'm
happy to amplify your voice andany other voice of women of
color. That's what we're herefor.
Awesome. Where can our listenersconnect with you online?
Jordana Vasquez (50:38):
Sure. So we have a couple of different
outlets, we have Instagram,which is @woc__cs, we have
Twitter with the same handle, wehave LinkedIn, we have a
LinkedIn group that's reallyactive. That's where we go for
job opportunities. So we'realways posting if not daily,
every other day about anythingfrom energy to policy to
(51:02):
creative. We have a website, soeverything WOC/CS related from
events, way to connect, mediumpublish applications, you can
find it there. The last thing Iwould say email,
womenofcolor.cs@gmail.com.
Stephanie Eche (51:14):
Well, we'll link to everything in the show notes
and I again, want everyone tosign up for your newsletter and
find you, connect with youonline. Also urbanonsite.com so
you can read Jordis blog posts,and yeah, thank you so much for
chatting with me today.
Jordana Vasquez (51:29):
Oh, thank you.
This was a lot of fun, staysafe, stay healthy, and I'll
talk to you soon.
Stephanie Eche (51:33):
You too, okay, bye.
Thanks so much for watching thisepisode of First Coat. If you
liked this video, pleasesubscribe and check out the next
episode in our playlist. Let meknow what else you want to learn
about public realm art in thecomments below. And follow us on
Instagram @firstcoatpodcast or@distillcreative. First Coat is
(51:54):
a production of my company,Distill Creative. Check us out
at distillcreative.com.
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